


what's mine is yours

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Hair Braiding, Post-TLJ, braid kink, just assume Ben came to his senses and defected at some point and everything worked out, pointless and plotless fluff, unconventional marriage proposals?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 21:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18157550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: Rey might not have any traditions of her own, but that’s okay. Ben is more than willing to share his.Or: yet another braiding fic, with barely any actual braiding. Inspired by a scene from Day 22 of my Christmas collection,a language that i never knew existed before.





	what's mine is yours

Six months after Ben’s defection, the Resistance plans a celebration for the string of victories they’ve won thanks to his intel.

It’s nothing grand, barely a feast according to those who remember what that was like, but it’s the first celebration of any kind that Rey will ever experience, and somehow word of that reaches the general.

Poe finds her two hours before the party and marches her over to the general’s quarters, and the next thing Rey knows she’s sitting on the ground while Leia runs soothing hands through her hair and slowly fashions it into an intricate braid befitting the occasion.

“Are braids… important to you?” Rey asks haltingly, staying as still as she can and channeling her nervous energy into babbling instead. “You don’t have to answer, it’s just, you’re always wearing them, and I’ve noticed that they change, sometimes, when things happen, and Kaydel said something about your home planet once–”

“Alderaan,” Leia says quietly, hands stilling for a moment. Rey winces to herself, realizing belatedly that maybe she shouldn’t have brought up the lost planet and all the grief that comes with it on such a happy day. But when the general speaks again, her voice is wistful instead of sad, with an airy, faraway quality to it rather than the weight of sorrow.

Leia keeps weaving. “Braids are a language all on their own, to my people. We lost a lot when our planet was taken from us, but this… this we kept. If I had a daughter, I would’ve taught her all about it the way my mother taught me, the way her mother taught her.” She laughs then, a rare, beautiful occurrence that’s increased in frequency ever since her son’s return. “I had Ben instead, but he made a perfect student nonetheless, always climbing up on tables and chairs to reach my hair and practice.”

Rey nearly, _nearly_ turns around and ruins all of Leia’s hard work. “Ben can braid?” she asks, smiling at the thought.

“Oh yes, I taught him nearly everything–”

The door connecting Leia’s quarters to Ben’s opens, and the man himself appears with a frown on his face and a datapad in his hands.

“Mom, I’d really rather not–”

He looks up from his datapad, pauses as he takes in the sight of Leia on the edge of her bed and Rey on the floor next to her, a half-formed Alderaanian braid between them, and all Rey can think about is Ben in place of Leia, running those large hands of his through her hair, being so, so gentle as he honors his mother’s tradition–

She’s forcibly yanked out of her daydream when a spike of _something_ ripples through the Bond, an indecipherable mess of a dozen emotions tangled together.

“I’ll come back later,” Ben mutters, and shuts the door behind him.

Leia goes back to work with a heavy sigh that fills the silent room.

“What… what was that?” Rey asks, her words echoing through the Bond as a demand. She’s met with silence in her mind, a door between them as solid as the one that separates mother from son.

“You tell me,” Leia mutters, finger-combing a section of Rey’s hair to undo the braid that was messed up when Ben walked in. “Some days I wonder if my son is still in there, but then he goes and does something stupid like this and there’s no doubt that he is.”

“Something stupid?” Rey repeats with a frown. “What did he–”

“Go talk to him after this, will you?” Leia urges as she starts to work on the last section of loose hair. “I don’t know how your Bond works exactly, but you two should talk about this, and Maker knows he won’t be the one to bring it up. A total and utter nerd herder, just like his father before him.”

There’s a hint of amusement in her voice but also the heaviness Rey was expecting, the weight of grief and loss and a wound still too fresh to pick at. She hums a wordless agreement and they lapse into a comfortable silence then, and just minutes later Leia’s pulling her up to her feet and leading her over to the mirror in the corner of the room.

“Oh,” Rey whispers to herself as she catches sight of her reflection, delicate rows crisscrossing the sides of her head before they join into a thick braid that flows down her back.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Leia asks with a smile, riffling through the chest of drawers under the mirror for a small metal box that opens to reveal a set of hair ornaments, precious stones carved into delicate, intricate flowers.

“It’s beautiful,” she says as Leia carefully adds the accessories to her hair. “But… I love it, of course, and I’m not complaining, not at all, but… didn’t you say you were going to put my hair up?”

Leia steps back, and in the mirror Rey watches her take a good, long look at her handiwork. Finally, she offers Rey a smile and a shrug. “Plans change. Sometimes you’re halfway through a casual celebratory updo when your idiot of a son decides to show up and make a mess, and you’ve just got to adapt and roll with it. Now go talk to him, will you?”

“Um.” Rey turns around to face Leia, uncertainty slowing her tongue and her mind. “Of course. I’ll just… go now,” she mumbles, waving at the door.

“Good,” Leia says with a nod, and under her watchful eye Rey crosses the room and raises her palm to the scanner. It occurs to her then that she probably doesn’t have clearance for the general’s private quarters, but when she turns to Leia all she finds is an encouraging smile.

“Oh, and Rey? I want to know _exactly_ what his face looks like when he sees your hair.”

It should be an odd request, but then again they’ve just had a conversation about Alderaanian braids being a language all on their own. Rey nods and presses her palm to the scanner. “Of course, General,” she acquiesces, and then she’s in Ben’s room and he’s lounging on his bed in only a pair of pants, glaring at a beige tunic sitting on the foot of his bed as if it’s Armitage Hux himself.

“So,” Rey says, and holds back her laughter when Ben startles at the sight of her, narrowly avoiding a collision between his head and the wall.

“Rey, what are you–”

He gapes at her, mouth opening and closing as he tries to form a sentence or maybe even a word. Finally, Ben asks, “Why are you wearing a wedding braid?”

 _Oh_.

She tries her best to fake nonchalance, gives Ben a shrug as she approaches him. “So that’s what this is?” she asks, sitting on the edge of his bed with a generous two feet of space between them.

It takes Ben no time at all to shuffle over to her side, and she watches his throat work as one hand hovers just above a pearlescent, gem-encrusted flower. “It’s… it’s a Promise Cord,” he explains, not quite meeting her eye as he traces the smaller braids scattered across the back of her head. “Each braid is a promise to the bride from her partner, with a pin to secure both the promise and the braid.”

Rey thinks of the way Leia had kept the flowers hidden away, the fact that she keeps them with her even now when she left behind so much in the early days of the Resistance. “Were these… were these the ones the general wore when–?”

“I think so,” Ben whispers as a faint pang of melancholy fills the Bond. It’s always like this, whenever he’s confronted with a reminder of Han. Of his father.

And all Rey can do is take his hand in her own and wait for it to pass.

Ben looks down at their hands, laces their fingers together and gives her a small smile that quickly turns into a frown. “Wait, I saw what my mother was doing earlier, with your hair. It was a Victory Crown. So why–”

“Oh, right,” Rey interrupts, sending bits and pieces of her conversation with Leia across the Bond before she projects her own memory of that odd, indecipherable _something_ she’d detected from him right before he shut the door on the both of them. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” Ben mutters almost immediately, dropping his eyes back down to their joined hands as he turns them palm-up and runs his thumb across the markings on her skin. _Life and love and loss,_ Maz had told her the day she arrived to join the Resistance. _All of it is there for you to know and accept, child, plain as day._

She can’t remember which one is which, but Rey has no doubt that Ben knows – just as he knows that he can’t appease her with a non-answer like that.

“Ben…”

He sighs and lets go of her hand, pulls away to lean against the wall. “Did my mom tell you about Alderaanian braiding traditions?”

“She said braiding is practically a language,” Rey echoes as she carefully runs her fingers along the side of her head. “They all have meanings, right?”

“The braids themselves, yes,” Ben nods, “but also the _act_ of braiding, and unbraiding too.” It takes a while for her expectant look to work, but eventually he elaborates.

“It’s… it’s very intimate, letting someone else braid your hair,” he finally admits, eyes firmly fixed on the braid running down her back. And then–

_I wanted to be the first to braid yours._

The words are solely between the two of them, in the secret shared space of their Bond, yet Ben’s ears and cheeks flush as if he’s announced them for all the world to hear as he ducks his head and stares down at his lap.

Rey inches closer, her heart too full with something she can’t put into words.

So she speaks about something else instead. “On Jakku, there are no traditions.”

Ben looks up. He always does, when she speaks of Jakku or her past or herself – he looks up and he listens and he cares.

“There are beliefs, and superstitions, but the only thing passed down from parent to child is what’s worth hauling back to Plutt and which wrecks don’t have anything left in them,” Rey shrugs. “And… and I don’t know if my parents even had any traditions wherever it is they came from, if there’s anything they would have shared with me.”

It’s a simple statement of fact, nothing more and nothing less, but Ben reaches for her hand just as she reached for his earlier and gives her a squeeze.

Rey shakes herself out of it before she can get lost in the wasteland of her memories and gives him a smile. “So I don’t have any traditions of my own, but… but I really like yours.”

“They’re yours,” Ben says without a moment’s hesitation. “Anything that’s mine, everything that’s mine – it’s yours, Rey.”

There’s that same earnestness in his eyes that always brings tears to hers, that same look he gave her the day he begged her to rule with him, the day he begged her to forgive him, all the days they’ve shared since that have seen him overwhelmed by a love so big neither of them know what to do with it.

She moves closer to sit between his legs. “This Promise Cord… you’re supposed to braid it for me, right? Not your mother?”

Ben gulps, and she reaches out to take his face in her hands to keep his eyes on hers. “I… that is… yes, traditionally it’s the groom’s duty. When the time comes.”

“Tell me more,” Rey murmurs, using one hand to guide his to her hair, to encourage him to comb through his mother’s carefully woven braids and take them out.

_And unbraiding too._

“Well, uh,” Ben falters as he catches on, using both hands now to gently remove the flowers and set them on his nightstand. “You… the bride would start growing her hair out as soon as she’s engaged. The longer her hair, the more promises her partner can make.”

It’s been a while since Rey last cut her hair, having made the decision to grow it out now that she no longer spends her days in the desert. It’s grown past her shoulders now, hangs just below her shoulder blades, but she’s seen holos of Leia in her youth, of hair hanging past her waist and sometimes even her hips.

“How long would I grow it out for?” she asks, deliberate in her choice of words.

Ben stills for just a moment. “Six months, at least,” he says, eyes still focused on her hair. “Most Alderaanians tend to keep their hair long anyway, but wedding planning usually takes about that long. Some brides choose to wait for a year.”

Rey scrunches up her nose to draw his attention. “I don’t think I could wait for a whole year.”

It’s a dangerous game she’s playing, a distant dream neither of them should be entertaining when the tides have just begun to turn in their favor. But it feels pointless to pretend or deny or play ignorant when she knows what she dreams of at night, when she knows what Ben dreams of too.

Maybe that thought bleeds through, because he finally smiles then and runs a hand through her hair, toying with the ends. “I think six months would be enough.”

She nods in agreement. “So, what happens next?”

“The cou… we would spend those six months coming up with promises to make,” Ben says, dropping all pretenses as his hands slide down to her waist to hold her close. “And when… when we agree on a final set, my family would be the one responsible for the ornaments – usually flowers, but some couples choose to go with a more personal design.”

Rey eyes the pins on his nightstand. “I like the flowers,” she decides, knowing Leia wouldn’t have brought them out for just any reason. If this is what she and her son are willing to offer Rey, if they’re happy to share their family and their traditions and their heirlooms – well, Rey will happily accept.

“I like them too,” Ben says with a smile, leaning down for a quick peck on her lips. “On the morning of, once everything else is done and everyone’s ready, the wedding party will leave us alone while they tend to our guests, and I’ll braid each promise we’ve decided to share into your hair.”

“Do I do anything?” Rey asks, tilting her head in curiosity. “I mean, I know we’re sharing them, but if I’m the only one wearing them, it feels…”

Ben nods. “Some brides choose to reciprocate with a single braid for the groom. It means they acknowledge the promises, and pledge to do the same.”

Rey grins as she runs a hand through his hair. “You’ll have to teach me how.”

“We’ve got time,” he assures her with a smile, the kind that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners, the kind that warms her in a way no desert sun ever could.

“And then what?” Rey prompts, sliding one hand into his. “You said something about unbraiding?”

“Alderaanians only wear their hair down in the privacy of their homes, around their loved ones,” Ben explains. “A married Aldeeranian will only let their hair down in the presence of their partner, and usually with their help.”

“So you’re supposed to help me take my hair down at the end of each day?”

“Only if you ask me to. If you choose to let me. It’s… it’s a form of communication, each and every day of a relationship. It means you trust your partner with this because you trust them more than anyone else in the galaxy.”

“I already do,” Rey tells him without hesitation.

“So do I, sweetheart,” Ben replies, lifting their joined hands to press a kiss to her inner wrist. She waits until he’s done to curl her free hand around his neck and pull him down for a proper kiss, rising up on her knees to make it easier on both their necks as Ben wraps his arms around her.

One hand slides into her hair, combing through the last of her braids as they break the kiss to press their foreheads together, sharing a secret smile as Ben rubs his nose against hers in a still-new show of affection.

A year away from the First Order and six months on base has softened him, allowed him to slowly shed the hard shell of his past to reveal the boy Leia still remembers, the man Rey’s always known him to be. But it still feels surreal sometimes, to have Ben here with her, to giggle as he nuzzles the ticklish spot behind her ear, to realize that they’re building a future worth fighting for.

“I love you,” she murmurs when Ben’s lips return to hers, leaving behind a trail of kisses she might need to cover up this evening. Funny how she’d tried so hard to keep those three words in, only for the dam to be broken the day Ben showed up out of the blue, ready to risk everything just to tell her in person.

Ben smiles against her lips. “I love–”

“Kids! You can’t be late to your own party!” Leia calls through the door, complete with insistent knocking.

A quick glance at the datapad on Ben’s nightstand reveals that they’ve got little more than half an hour to sort themselves out and get to the celebration.

“We’ll see you there!” Ben tells his mother, prompting a back-and-forth that includes _several_ warnings from Leia that have Rey laughing into her hand. When the general starts bringing up that one time she and Han were late to a similar occasion because of… certain distractions, Rey is relieved to find nothing but panic and slight disgust on Ben’s end of the Bond.

“Mom, stop. Stop!”

“I’ll save the story for dinner then,” Leia promises, her laughter fading away along with her footsteps.

Ben shudders at the thought before he finally turns back to her. “Do I really have to go?”

“It’s _your_ celebration, Ben,” she points out, ignoring his grumbled protestations as she leans forward to pick up the forgotten tunic crumpled up at the foot of his bed. “Come on, get dressed. I still need you to braid my hair for me.”

That effectively shuts him up.

“You want me to–?”

Rey shrugs as she gets to her feet, shaking out the tunic to find it in decent condition. “You should probably start practicing, right?”

When she turns back to him, Ben’s looking up at her as if she’s offered him the galaxy.

“What?” Rey asks, her lips twitching with a barely-contained smile.

Ben shakes his head. “Nothing. Nothing,” he insists before she can question him, patting the space next to him. “I just… I love you.”

Rey curls into his side and closes her eyes, allows herself a little sigh as his warmth seeps through her clothes to burrow under her skin. “Is there a braid for engaged couples?” she asks quietly, eyes still closed.

Warm lips brush against her temple. “I’ll show you,” Ben murmurs, already carding his fingers through her hair.

**Author's Note:**

> This feels particularly long and slow and plotless, but I’m choosing to tell myself that’s because it’s been a while since I’ve written anything this long. Hopefully that’s actually the case!
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this, my 40th Reylo fic. Please feel free to leave a comment - hearing from you guys always makes my day. <3
> 
> Pro tip: you can find moodboards for my fics on [Tumblr](https://eleanor-writes-stuff.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hiraeth_writes).


End file.
